On Nov 7, 2008, at 10:07 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> Do you understand that if comp is false, then arithmetical truth
> contains (immaterial) zombies (because it contains already the
> relative implementations of all solutions of Schroedinger equations
> and variant, if only that for example ...)?
> It contains fictions, if you want, but as precise as us to say, the
> level of *description* of the quantum strings, again as a picture. Do
> you see what I mean?
Yes, I do see what you mean, and in fact I agree with you. The point I
was making was that most philosophers - including those like Dennett
who believe in the logical impossibility of zombies - believe that
(for instance) you would have to implement a cellular automata in
order for creatures within it to be conscious. If you were to argue
that they do therefore believe in zombies of a certain type, they
would just say that that's not what they mean when they talk about
zombies. And in fact, they're correct - "zombie" is a technical term
that philosophers have invented, and by their definition it refers to
*physical* things (or *implemented* computations) that behave
identically to conscious things but aren't conscious.
So the technical term "zombie" carries along with it the baggage of
"physical existence". That baggage could be eliminated - maybe you
could convince Dennett that computations don't have to be implemented
in order to be conscious - but you couldn't do it simply by suggesting
that unimplemented computations should count as zombies.
In actual fact, I think the real burden is on the people who believe
that a computation needs to be implemented in order to be conscious.
But now we're just playing what Dennett calls "burden tennis". They
can just say that the burden lies on us to show why the burden lies on
them.
-- Kory
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Received on Sun Nov 09 2008 - 03:37:11 PST